


saltwater

by iimpavid



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Nonbinary Character, Other, Past Relationship(s), Recreational Drug Use, Romance, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-05 00:14:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17314466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid
Summary: Once upon a time, Juno Steel had a fiancée.





	saltwater

**Author's Note:**

> It struck me that convincing Juno Steel to marry anybody at all would be like wrestling an alligator and a few hours later I started writing this fic.
> 
> A playlist to set the mood: [Yes, Hard Feelings. ](https://open.spotify.com/user/naracalamme/playlist/28tYsrRTynD4GIYqITu25A?si=mHYQEiS7QNWYRz0Kt3Lh-w)

“Marry me.”

The two of them sprawled naked amongst the copious pillows comprising the top six inches of Theo’s bed. They passed a cigarette between them, basking in the afternoon sun.

Juno exhaled a few smoke rings and watched them drift away before answering. “Yeah, sure. I’ll run for mayor after it’s official. We’ll look great in the papers.”

Theo snatched the cigarette from him with nimble fingers just so they could thwack him in the face with a pillow.

Juno yelped, “Hey! Give that back!”

“We’re taking turns, you jerk.” Theo stubbed out the cigarette on the headboard and straddled him instead.

Backlit against the window their hair cascaded gold down their back. Somehow they’d made it through marathon morning sex with their eyeliner intact— a talent Juno admired and lacked. His lipstick had left a bruise-purple trail down Theo’s throat, sternum, belly. Any eyeliner he’d attempted to put on that morning (while they were both still trying to act like adults and make it to their respective jobs) was lost among the patterned pillowcases of Theo’s pillow hoard.

Juno smiled up at them. “Well, hello there, gorgeous,” he purred, “ _Come_ here often?”

The pun took a moment to register and when it did Theo groaned, “Oh my god how could you,” and twisted Juno’s nipple in retaliation— it put a stop to his laughing, at least. Juno wasn’t a slouch in any part of the bedroom, wrestling included, and despite Theo’s peremptory flailing and sharp-nailed pinching he had them pinned in less than a minute, both of them flushed and panting.

Theo wriggled one wrist free and trailed their fingers along Juno’s jaw. “I mean it, Juno, marry me. We would be wonderful together and _you'd_ look great in a wedding dress,” they tapped a fingertip against his nose.

For half a second Juno hesitated, balanced on the fingertips of choice-- and then he laughed. It was such a bitter noise that it nearly covered everything else. “That’s hilarious— you don’t wanna marry me.” He rolled off them and extricated himself from the bed’s grasp with easy grace. He didn’t look back at them as he left their bedroom. “I’m gonna order lunch, what do you want?”

“I want to marry you— what do _you_ want?”

“I’m feeling sushi, personally.”

“You’re gonna have to answer me one way or the other eventually.”

“‘s it alright if I put this on your card? ‘Cause I already did.”

* * *

There were a lot of things that they didn’t talk about growing up: Theo’s creepy-but-rich step-father; Mick’s too-tall tales; the screaming fights that always seemed to emanate from Sasha’s front door; the way Ben tended to flinch when something came to close to his face too quick-- but Juno never flinched at anything at all. They didn’t talk about it and they didn’t talk about the not-talking-about-it. None of them said a word about a thing, at least not while the sun was up and there was the risk of making eye contact with each other, and it was fine. They were all fine.

So fine that Theo couldn’t hardly invite Juno out for an afternoon without it blowing up in their face.

Theo stood by the stove watching Juno doing his best to extricate himself from the writhing mass of murky ache that was home. There was a movie they had to catch and they were gonna be late. They checked their watch while Sarah Steel shouted at her son and Juno did his best to deflect.

“I’m just going out! What’s the problem?” In his furious bafflement Juno dropped the bag of trash he was meant to haul down to the incinerator. It clattered and split under the weight of too many tin cans and the violence of it was the last straw.

Sarah Steel pushed herself away from the shitty particle board kitchen table with a snarl. “Oh, is that how it’s gonna be? Do you really think you wanna do this, little monster?”

In their mind’s eye Theo could see how this played out: Sarah getting up close into Juno’s space smelling of cheap whiskey and cigarettes and daring him to flinch or sidestep or push back or say something or even breathe the wrong direction and give her an excuse.

Theo threw themself between mother and son so fast they stepped on Juno’s toes under their boots and Sarah Steel bumped right into Theo’s chest.

They weren’t terribly tall.

They weren’t well-armed.

They weren’t at all intimidating in their fishnets and vinyl.

But they knew a thing or two about street fights and they squared up for it: shoulders set, knees bent and jaw clenched.

“He doesn’t, but _I_ will if you don’t back off.” In kitchen's silence the proclamation was gunshot-loud. The strength of their conviction startled them-- and from the look of it, it startled Sarah, too. She just stood there stock still and staring inches away from Theo’s face.

“We’re gonna go to the movies, now, Mrs. Steel.” They said it reasonably, like their knees weren’t quaking and their heart wasn't beating out of their chest. They didn’t even blink. “We’re gonna go to the movies. We’ll be with Mick and Sasha and Ben.” They reached behind them and grasped for Juno’s arm. When they found it they shoved him toward the door and away from his mother. “And we’re all probably gonna spend the night at Mick’s mom’s place. If anything changes we’ll call you so you don’t hafta worry about a thing.”

Their boots squeaked on the linoleum as they turned and followed Juno out of the apartment leaving the split bag spilling garbage in the middle of the kitchen floor.

There were a lot of things that they didn’t talk about. The time Theo went toe-to-toe against Sarah Steel was one of them.

* * *

Most of their joint nights off started the same way-- Theo and their cosmetics hoard crowded into Juno’s closet-sized bathroom at 11 p.m. finishing their makeup.

“C’mon Theo, we’re gonna be late!”

“Are you this impatient on stake-outs for work?”

“You’ve been watching too much _CSI: Halcyon_ again— hurry up, Cass’ll be pissed if we’re late.”

Cass Kanagawa threw a hell of a party and Juno was hellbent on going to this one. Theo didn't quite get it. They wrinkled their nose in the mirror and, after a moment’s spiteful consideration, upended the last of their body safe glitter into their hair. Most of it got all over Juno’s sink when they fluffed through their curls one last time. He’d be going to work glittery for weeks.

They emerged from the bathroom black-light ready in neon fishnet and ultraviolet body paint. “As if she’d miss a couple of nobodies like us.”

“Dunno about you, doll, but I’m pretty sure she’d miss me.” His smile was rakish as he shrugged into his leather jacket. “You do know this isn’t a rave, right?”

“Are you trying to tell me I’m too pretty for your big, bad punk friends, Juno?”

Theo strode up to him and carefully took his jaw in hand, angling his cheek into position. They kissed it slowly and deliberately and pulled away with a smack. A perfect imprint of their lips was left behind, matte lavender that would scream violet under the club lights. “There. Now we’re both too pretty for your friends.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

“Sure— hey, what do you know, the cab’s here. Let’s not keep Cass waiting. Maybe we can convince her to like me just as much as she does you.”

The reality of it was, Theo reflected in the back of the cab— Juno sat beside them jittery from another long week and some deep itch of his— the reality was Cass Kanagawa never went anywhere without at least a gram of soma tucked into her back pocket and Juno Steel liked to shine. Cass liked that Juno worked for the HCPD and could maybe possibly overlook certain superfluous details, sometimes, when her brother Cecil got himself into hot water. They were friends of a sort.

Fair enough, all things considered. Theo couldn’t begrudge anybody a habit they shared themself.

Still they couldn’t help but lean into Juno’s side and prize his fingers out of a fist and into a hand they could hold. “You sure you wanna go out?”

“Of course— can’t exactly go home now. All dressed up with nowhere to go, it’d be a waste of effort.”

“Sure, only you’re kinda quiet. I thought maybe that thing with the bank robbery was getting to you.”

He snorted. “Nah. Happens all the time.”

“Not to you,” they said and winced. It was the wrong thing to say. But because they liked the ditch they were digging _so damn much_ they kept on shoveling: “You’ve never killed anybody in the line of duty before, Juno. I hear that can do a number on—”

“Thanks so much for pointing that out! It’s never have crossed my mind if you hadn’t, Theo! I had no idea— you gotta stop watching so many streams, you know that?”

They pulled up to a curb and Juno couldn’t throw himself out of the cab fast enough. Theo covered the cab fare.

There were two kinds of parties that the Kanagawa twins threw: the ones that were full of debauchery and drama for the streams and the ones that their parents hadn’t scripted and pre-approved. This was one of the latter. Between the handful of soma dots Juno turned up with once he’d gotten over his tantrum and the subsequent body shots— over a dozen between them because this, too, was a kind of competition that Juno played to win— closing time and the dawn after it came too early.

They drifted high as atmospheric rafts along the freeway bridge. It was too early for rush hour traffic. The moons set off to their left in a deep redviolet haze.

“All that and you didn’t even introduce me to one of the Kanagawas—”

“Trust me, Cecil’s not somebody you wanna be friends with.”

“Well maybe not,” Theo’d heard the rumors about that one. She teased, “but what about your _friend_ Cassandra?”

“It’s not like that.”

“No,” Theo agreed, “but it might be fun.”

Juno snorted. “I thought you were all about that marriage and monogamy junk.”

“Sure I am, but I don’t know whether or not you are.”

“You don’t wanna marry a murderer, Theo, trust me. It never ends well.”

* * *

Juno’s personal comms chimed at a quarter to quitting time. He was in a good mood-- a rare thing since staying in his apartment watching empty bottles collect dust was his pastime du jour for the last three weeks-- and finished filing the last of his reports with what might have been called a spring in his step. He and Theo didn’t celebrate anniversaries but they’d been seeing each other steadily for five years now.

Theo’s texts came through quicker than each alert chime could finish:

_i can’t go out tonight_

_migraine day 3_

_i’m sorry babe_

Juno frowned down at his phone. A rush of disappointment crawled over his shoulders and down his back. They didn’t celebrate anniversaries but they’d found themselves going out every year on the last Tuesday in May to dance and drink and generally be that disgusting couple. Sometimes twice a year, because neither of them could keep the formal Martian calendar straight.

Guilt helped him get a grip.

Theo’s migraines were no joke. They blamed them on Mars’ proximity to the Sun, on their pale green eyes, on radiation fluctuations in the atmosphere. Whatever the cause they laid Theo up in the dark and quiet unable to abide even the ends of their hair being touched for days at a time.

He tapped out a reply, slumped against the side of his desk: 

> **don’t worry about it.**
> 
> **need anything? i can come over**

_please don’t_

_the apartment’s a wreck_

 

Half an hour later, he let himself into Theo’s apartment anyway because he’d never in his life been able to leave well enough alone.

Theo really wasn’t kidding. They’d thrown every window in their apartment open, the breeze had the whole place freezing and smelling faintly of regolith and ozone, probably as a measure against the stench emanating from a mountain of unwashed dishes cluttering every flat surface in the kitchen and the uneaten takeout cartons collected on the coffee table— that rats hadn’t climbed the fire escape to steal it was a testament to its sheer badness.

It’d been longer than a three day migraine, that much was obvious. Maybe a bad trip preceded it or just some run of the mill amp crash because everyone had to come down eventually.

Guilt twinged again. He hadn’t noticed their radio silence.

“Hey, Theo, it’s just me,” he called. He wasn’t stupid. Theo slept with a baseball bat beside their bed and knew how to use it— they’d grown up in Old Town, too, a few blocks up from Juno and had been an unchallenged block fight champion thanks to that very same bat. It was dented in some places and a bit stained with age but still more than serviceable in home defense.

No sound came from behind the closed bedroom door but Theo messaged him almost immediately, four times in rapid succession:

_you’re so lucky i don’t have the energy to fight anyone rn_

_why are you here_

_i’m shit for company babe_

_go away_

> **i’m just here to rob you blind**
> 
> **don’t worry about it**
> 
> **go back to sleep**

_make sure you take my new sound system_

_i’m tired of making payments on it_

 

He meant to clean off just one stove burner so he could make Theo that rank tea they kept around just for migraine days. (It smelled like licorice and tasted like dirt but Theo swore by it.) But _that_ required he wash at least one pot for water and throw out the pizza boxes stacked on the stove.

It was all downhill from there, easier than tripping, and took him almost two hours but once he started he wasn’t about to leave the job half done.

Some of the pans he just dropped down the building’s trash chute out of hand along with the detritus accumulated in the fridge and throughout the living room. He wasn't going to deal with rotting food. Washing the remaining dishes was harder, though, with Juno making as little noise as possible scouring everything bare-handed because Theo, _for some godawful reason, didn’t own a pair of dish gloves_. The clothes that Theo had left scattered throughout the apartment, the ones that weren’t made of PVC, he shoved into a trash bag and hauled downstairs to the laundry room.

It was meditative, cleaning somebody else’s house. As a kid he’d always sneak over to Mick’s place to help him clean his room so Mrs. Mercury would let them hang out together. It’d driven his mom nuts. He’d clean up after his friends, after Ben, after her, but never himself if she didn’t raise hell about it. This wasn’t any different even if Theo (and this fact he acknowledged with all the love he was capable of) was about seventy times dirtier than Mick had ever managed to be.

Navigating Theo’s bedroom was easier. The only thing they kept in the closet their landlord claimed was a bedroom was their bed, piled with pillows, and single lamp that rotated and cast old earth constellations all over the walls.

Juno changed out the trash can Theo’d dragged to their bedside— the take out and migraine hadn’t gone well together, clearly— and came back again with a steaming mug of their tea and a bottle of mouthwash. His eyes had almost adjusted to the dark and he could see the vague shape of Theo sitting up from the pillows, their hair a ratted mess around their shoulders.

“I thought this might, uh, help,” he said, careful to speak softly. He heard them reach for the mouthwash first. Swish vigorously and spit into the clean trash can, rinsing the dead, sour taste from the backs of their teeth, tongue. Gagging a little at the strength of the alcohol and chemically enhanced mint. Then, the mug scraping over the surface of their nightstand. The soft sounds of Theo sipping, wincing, blowing over the surface of the tea to cool it, sipping again despite the heat.

“Thanks.” Theo’s voice sounded thick, tired. They’d been lying down but not sleeping. “Do you wanna stay?”

“I— yeah— I mean. I don’t wanna. Make things worse.”

“Y’can’t. C’m’ere.” They flailed their free hand out toward him, landed on his shirt and grasped the fabric tight.

Juno all but tripped into their lap trying to toe off his shoes and Theo shoved themself deeper into the mass of pillows to make room for him.

“How’d you do that and not spill?”

“’m talented.” They leaned over him to set the mug back on the lonely nightstand. Stayed draped across his chest and complained, “It’s like something’s tryin’ to break outta my skull like a chicken egg.” They turned one ear flat against his ribs to listen to his heartbeat.

“Do you need anything else?”

“For you to shut up.”

Juno smiled despite himself and shut up.

* * *

 "I hate the stairs in this building. It's like there's this energy-sucking force field at the top of every landing and no matter what you do-- they're just. The worst. Why the hell did they have to break the elevator _today_?"

“The elevator being out wouldn’t be such a pain in the ass if you hadn’t got shot.”

“I didn’t get shot.” Juno unlocked his apartment with his left hand; his right arm was still in a sling. Bandages wrinkled the right side of his t-shirt.

“That’s not what your chart said.” Theo shut the door behind them with more force than strictly necessary.

“Yeah, well, they’re wrong. Where the hell’d you see my medical records anyway? That’s confidential!”

“Well sorry, Juno, I bribed another nurse because I can’t help being a little worried about the love of my life getting shot!”

“For fuck’s — will you just drop it already?”

The fresh set of skin grafts across his arm and side felt no better than the third degree burns had. Laser grazes wouldn’t kill anyone but they wrought hell on skin. Juno couldn’t think much beyond how much he wanted some peace and quiet and a drink. And Theo, they had run out of patience.

“No, I won’t just drop it! Maybe if this was the second time, or even the third, but it’s not, Juno! It’s not! You keep doing stupid shit and getting yourself hurt when you don’t need to—“

“Oh, so I was supposed to just let Puck get shot?”

“Y— No — I don’t know! Maybe! Juno, that’s not the point! This one time is not the point! It’s the time you got stabbed and the last time you got shot and that concussion you got that almost blew up your brain!”

The scar from that last concussion— proof that the human face wasn’t meant to contact fire escape railings even at 3.7 meters per second squared— stood out, a violent keloid slash across his nose. It had knocked Juno out for almost a full day and it was only when Theo successfully bribed a nurse that they’d gotten the news that Juno’s brain may or may not have been bleeding, Juno may or may not have been dying, and, no, they still weren’t allowed in to see him. Only family, next of kin.

Theo was red-faced and furious and trying their best not to cry because that wouldn’t accomplish a damn thing— it’d piss Juno off worse or, more likely, make him feel guilty. He didn’t need that. They swallowed. Tried for a reasonable volume and found it.

“You do stupid, dangerous shit,” they repeated, “and it works out great most of the time but sometimes it doesn’t. And when that happens and you end up in the hospital? I’m not allowed to see you or even know what’s going on with you— nobody will talk to me. That’s if anyone at the station even remembers to call me to tell me what happened! Then I just have to sit there in the waiting room and… and wait! And it’s awful. It’s just awful.”

Juno opened his mouth to respond and Theo held up a hand. “ I'm not done yet! I get that— that the greater good is your mantra or whatever, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, fine— but— I don’t know what I would do, I really don’t, if you died at work and nobody told me and I didn’t find out until I was trying to get into your apartment for a booty call and your landlord was selling off all your crap!” They laughed because it was a hilarious image Because Juno didn’t have all that much to sell. He was practically an ascetic— if asceticism included overworking and soma binges and karaoke and drinking contests on his nights off. Theo laughed because they were as tired as Juno looked.

“What I’m saying is I want-- I want you to try, Juno, to care about your own life a just little more. For me. Please.”

They swallowed and stared at Juno staring at them like he'd just been hit by a truck. “Theo. I- I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, I figured you weren’t a mind reader and I should probably say something.”

Juno snorted and dropped himself onto his couch— only to go into a full-body cringe. Burns weren’t meant to be treated so roughly.

Theo hurried to the kitchen for an ice pack and water. They’d hit the corner pharmacy on the way home, when they were still in post-hospital-pre-argument silence, and Juno’s painkillers were tucked into their coat pocket.

“Here,” they held out their olive branch and didn’t sit down until Juno accepted it. They watched him read the label on the bottle and take twice the recommended dose. It was going to be that kind of night. “I’m sorry that I yelled at you. You don’t deserve that.”

“You don’t deserve a girlfriend who does shit that makes you cry.”

“You don’t get to decide what I deserve. But … you can decide whether my girlfriend does shit that makes me cry or not.”

“You say that like it's easy.”

“I dunno. It might be. The other option is you marry me so I can actually visit you in the hospital the next time you try to kill yourself on the job.” It came out more bitter than they meant it to, especially in their fragile present, but it was said and too late to take it back.

“I can’t marry you, Theo. I don’t have a dress.” 

* * *

Theo had a line of microwaves on their kitchen counter, four of them, and had apparently managed most of their adulthood cooking out of them alone. “My mom’d always just nuke stuff one at a time and by the time she got done with the last dish everything else would be cold so I figured, y’know, four microwaves made the most sense. One for meat, one for veggies, one for pasta, and one for dessert!” The reasoning was flawless. The execution, however, left Juno gaping in unabashed horror as Theo filled a bowl of loose elbow noodles with water and set the microwave to HIGH for five minutes.

“Hey, uh, Theo, y’know, that’ll probably be easier to make on the stove?”

“Nah, microwave’s faster and the mixing bowl’s microwavable, so don’t worry about cancer or anything.”

“You’re just gonna — do you have any pots and pans?”

“Uh, the tea kettle.”

“This doesn’t bug you at all?”

“No,” Theo was torn between defensive and insecure. ”Does it bug you?”

“Uh— I mean. Kinda?” Juno winced. “I mean, not really just like. Do you. Do you know how to cook stuff on a stove, at least?”

“I can boil water. Does that make you feel better?”

“Sorta? What do you do when the power’s out? You’ve gotta gas stove—“

“I order takeout, Juno, what’s the problem?”

“It’s not a problem! I just think you should know how to cook, like actually cook for real, okay! It’s— I dunno, it’s one of those useful things everybody should know by the time they finish high school like doing laundry or balancing a checkbook or folding fitted sheets!”

“Wait! Wait— back up. You can fold a fitted sheet?”

“Yeah. It’s not hard.”

“It’s not—“

They gaped at him.

Then all at once Theo grabbed his hand and led him to their linen closet and threw open the door. It was stacked full with neatly-folded comforters and pillow cases and flat sheets and at the bottom uncountable fabric patterns bulged and spilled out onto the carpet. No fewer than a dozen fitted sheets that had been wadded, balled, and stuffed into the bottom of the closet to be ignored until dealing with them became absolutely necessary.

“Juno, help me.”

The pile of fabric seemed to be expanding as he stared. “ _Wow_.”

“I am drowning in fitted sheets. You’re my only hope.”

“You got that right— look, how about you finish dinner and I’ll deal with. This.”

Theo could have collapsed in relief. “Thank you. But you gotta save some so you can show me how to do it without getting eaten by the sheet or breaking an arm by accident or something.”

“Sure, alright. I promise it’s nowhere near as hard as it looks,” he laughed and in the kitchen one of the microwaves gave a cheerful _ding_.

**Author's Note:**

> There will be more of this at some vague future point, I promise. ;)
> 
> Remember: your comments give me life!


End file.
